Found 50 article(s) for author 'Rohini Pande'

A Tough Call: Understanding barriers to and impacts of women’s mobile phone adoption in India. Rohini Pande, October 2018, Paper, “Today in India, 67% percent of men own mobile phones, but only 33% percent of women do. South Asian countries in general are clear outliers among countries of similar levels of development, with India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh exhibiting some of the world’s highest gender gaps in access to technology. While the mobile gender gap matters in its own right, it is particularly problematic because it can exacerbate other important forms of inequality — in earnings, networking opportunities, and access to information.” Link

An Experimental Test of the Association Between Network Centrality and Cross-Village Risk-Sharing Links. Rohini Pande, August 14, 2018, Paper, “We test a prediction from a recent paper by Ambrus and Elliott (2018), according to which less volatile incomes increases the association between within community centrality of a household, defined as Myerson centrality, and the probability of keeping financial connections with households outside the village. We use data from a unique field experiment in 185 Indian villages in which a randomly chosen half of the villages got access to formal banking services. We find empirical support for the prediction, as the relationship between Myerson centrality and having outside links is significantly more positive in villages that got access to formal banking.” Link

What happens when investments targeting women’s microbusinesses go to men? Rohini Pande, May 2, 2018, Paper, “Several studies find that male-operated – but not female-operated – microenterprises benefit from access to grants or loans. But these analyses overlook that female entrepreneurs often reside with a male business owner. Using data from randomized trials in India, Sri Lanka and Ghana, this paper finds that household-level income gains are equivalent regardless of the grant or loan recipient’s gender. Low average returns of female-run enterprises reflects the fact that women’s capital is typically invested into their husband’s enterprise.” Link

Women and Work in India: Descriptive Evidence and a Review of Potential Policies. Rohini Pande, Charity Troyer Moore, December 30, 2017, Paper, “Sustained high economic growth since the early 1990s has brought significant change to the lives of Indian women, and yet female labor force participation has stagnated at under 30%, and recent labor surveys even suggest some decline since 2005. Using a nationally representative household survey, we lay out five descriptive facts about female labor force participation in India that help identify constraints to higher participation. First, there is significant demand for jobs by women currently not in the labor force. Second, willing female non-workers have difficulty matching to jobs.”Link

Household Matters: Revisiting the Returns to Capital among Female Micro-entrepreneurs. Rohini Pande, April 17, 2017, Paper, “Several field experiments find positive returns to grants for male and not female microentrepreneurs. But, these analyses largely overlook that male and female micro-entrepreneurs often belong to the same household. Using data from randomized trials in India, Sri Lanka and Ghana, we show that the gender gap in microenterprise performance is not due to a gap in aptitude. Instead, low average returns of female-run enterprises are observed because women’s capital is invested into their husbands’ enterprises rather than their own. When women are the sole household enterprise operator, capital shocks lead to large increases in profits. Household-level income gains are equivalent regardless of the grant or loan recipient’s gender.” Link

Getting India’s women into the workforce: Time for a smart approach. Rohini Pande, March 10, 2017, Opinion “Between 1990 and 2015, India’s real GDP (gross domestic product) per capita grew from US$375 to US$1572, but its female labour force participation rate (LFPR) fell from 37% to 28%. This gives us a puzzle to solve: why isn’t India following the same trajectory as most other countries at a similar level of growth, where female LFP rises with GDP?” Link

Does Women’s Banking Matter for Women? Evidence from Urban India. Rohini Pande, November 16, 2016, Paper, “In many developing countries, women are prevented to take full advantage of the benefits of living in an urban area. In India, while one of every two men participates in the labor market, it is the case just for one of every six women. In this context, it is thought that access to microfinance is key to bridge the gap and to introduce women into the labor force. This is the first project to rigorously evaluate the long term impact of increasing access to microcredit on female labor force participation. In this study, we exploit quasi-experimental variation in women access to microfinance generated by a unique expansion strategy adopted by the oldest Women Bank in the world. From 1999 onward, the “ Shri Mahil Self Employment Women Association Sahkari (SEWA) Bank” massively introduced the use of loan collection officers which dramatically reduced the transaction cost of getting a loan in Ahmedabad, urban India.” Link

On Her Account: Can Strengthening Women’s Financial Control Boost Female Labor Supply? Rohini Pande, November 15, 2016, Paper, “In collaboration with the state government of Madhya Pradesh, we experimentally varied whether women’s wages from India’s public workfare program were deposited into female-owned bank accounts instead of into the male household head’s account (the status quo). This treatment increased women’s work, both in the program and in the private sector, despite no change in market wages. Treatment effects are concentrated among two groups of women: those who had not previously worked for the program and those whose husbands disapprove of women working. These results are at odds with a model of household behavior in which labor force participation decisions only depend on wages and own-preference for leisure. Instead, we argue that they are consistent with a model in which gender norms internalized by men limit women’s labor market engagement.” Link

E-governance, Accountability, and Leakage in Public Programs: Experimental Evidence from a Financial Management Reform in India. Rohini Pande, October 16, 2016, Paper, “In collaboration with the Government of Bihar, India, we conducted a large-scale experiment to evaluate whether transparency in fiscal transfer systems can increase accountability and reduce corruption in the implementation of a workfare program. The reforms introduced electronic fund-flow, cut out administrative tiers, and switched the basis of transfer amounts from forecasts to documented expenditures. Treatment reduced leakages along three measures: expenditures and hours claimed dropped while an independent household survey found no impact on actual employment and wages received; a matching exercise reveals a reduction in fake households on payrolls; and local program officials’ self-reported median personal assets fell.” Link

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